Exxon Continues to Fund Climate Science Denial

In the wake of Inside Climate News and the LA Times’ investigations into ExxonMobil’s climate science, the company has been terribly busy telling the world that it stands by its scientific work.

In a classic example of Public Relations 101, ExxonMobil’s head of PR, Ken Cohen, has been huffing and puffing and standing up for climate science, pushing everybody’s focus onto the studies Exxon funded.

“I came away with enormous regard for many of the Exxon scientists who researched climate change and for the managers and executives who gave them the resources and latitude to freely investigate a problem their own company was contributing to.”

But it’s what #ExxonDid next is what we think the NY Attorney General should focus on in his investigation. If Exxon had climate scientists on the case, and it knew all that it did, then how could it have done what it did next?

Ken Cohen is, according to The Holmes Report, “a lifetime Exxon employee,” having been with the company since 1977. He’s Vice President for Public and Government Affairs, a role he stepped into in 1999 after having been Legal Counsel. He was promoted into this role by Lee Raymond, company CEO and Chairman, who had long held skeptical views on climate change.

As part of his role, Cohen is Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the ExxonMobil Foundation, a position he has held since 1999, and still holds today, according to the Foundation’s 2014 tax form.

And it’s the ExxonMobil Foundation that has portioned out a total of $30.9m 1998-2014 to think tanks running climate denial campaigns.

Let us be clear: contrary to media reports, ExxonMobil did not stop funding denial in 2008 – it might like you to think it did, but it’s still funding denial today.

“Ken Cohen and his public affairs shop, in tandem with the K Street office in Washington, oversaw contributions to free-market advocates who published, spoke out, and file lawsuits to challenge policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or assess the long-term impact of global warming.”

To the public eye, Exxon’s “Public Information and Policy Research” section of its Worldwide Giving report, published every year on its website, looked like the company was just giving cash to right wing think tanks as many corporations did.

In the early 2000s there are numerous grants that have descriptions indicating money dedicated to climate change work. We saw this in the 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004Exxon Worldwide Giving reports.

In 2003, ExxonMobil earmarked over $1 million dollars worth of grants for climate change and, in 2004, listed over $1.6 million in climate specific grants among the $3.4 million given to groups who were engaged on the climate science and policy debate.

By “engaged” in the debate, we mean running full on climate denial campaigns. These were the ExxonMobil-funded army of climate deniers.

For example, in 2003, “Frontiers of Freedom” received two ExxonMobil grants, $95,000 for “Global Climate Change Outreach” and $50,000 for “Global Climate Change Activities”.

In 2004, there is a “Climate Change” grant for $10,000 to Steve Milloy’s “Advancement of Sound Science Coalition” – the “junk science” organisation set up by Philip Morris’s PR companies APCO and Burston Marstellar to challenge the science of second hand smoke. Milloy then moved to challenging global warming, ozone depletion, etc.

However, the following year, in 2005, things got strange. The public version of Cohen’s ExxonMobil Foundation’s grants contained no descriptons – intead vague, anodyne explainations (e.g “General Support”), whereas the forms the Foundation submitted to the IRS contained more detail about the grants. The public version is published in Exxonmobil’s Worldwide Giving Report, released each spring around the annual shareholders meeting, and officially filed with the IRS as a “990” form.

The 2005 990 lists a total of $996,500 in grants described as specifically for climate change-related work. The 2005 Worldwide Giving Report has none.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute got $90,000 that year, listed as “General Operating support” in the public report, but specified as “environmental programs” in the 990. The following year, the CEI produced a video – “Carbon Dioxide is our Friend” that caused such an outcry, ExxonMobil had to drop funding altogether.

The 2005 Worldwide Giving report lists the $80,000 grant as “Energy Sustainability Project” without the climate paranthetical and another grant for $71,500 for “General Operating Support” which appears to be a sum of the $21,500 grant for climate outreach and two grants totalling $50,000, listed in the 990 as “General Operating Support” and “Project Support.”

There is so much more. But we must ask this question of Ken Cohen:

if you knew all the science, if you are such a stand for good science, why did the foundation you chair spend so much money on climate denial?

We have so many more questions:

Who, specifically, at the ExxonMobil Foundation solicited and approved these grants?

Who annually reviewed the deliverables on the grants?

Who was the point of contact for the grantees?

Were the proposals coming in from NGOs like Heartland or Frontiers of Freedom or did you select or conduct outreach to those groups to set up these deals?

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